skylake processor, which one???

[bakes0310]

Seems quite a hot topic this skylake and x99 lark. I couldn't tell you myself which is better but from my understanding from reading on this thread and a few others. From a gamers point of view if I was buying. I think I would go with the x99 as I like having a high performance system as I like my games to be at max settings and a high frame rate.
I also don't like upgrading my motherboard and cpu a lot, so go for the one that will give me the performance I want for the longest.
Also I have a quite a big monitor so need my sli goodness, and from whats been mentioned x99 does it better?

 

[Phemo]

It's all a matter of opinion really. If you're not going to overclock then 6700K has a 700MHz clock speed advantage as well as the marginal IPC improvements so of course it's superior there.

If you factor overclocking into it and you happen to get 4.5GHz out of a 5820K and 4.6-4.7GHz out of a 6700K the difference is going to be marginal at best and so the extra two cores of the 5820K would be much more beneficial eventually. They may not be right now, but eventually they'll have a big use.

So really the way I see it is it's down to whether you want to overclock or not since when overclocked they hit similar clock speeds, the IPC difference is minor but the 50% core increase is major.

X99 will give more PCI-E lanes so is going to be better for 3 and 4 way SLI but for 2 cards I don't really believe there's much in it all.

 

[David Bisset]

It's all a matter of opinion really. If you're not going to overclock then 6700K has a 700MHz clock speed advantage as well as the marginal IPC improvements so of course it's superior there.

If you factor overclocking into it and you happen to get 4.5GHz out of a 5820K and 4.6-4.7GHz out of a 6700K the difference is going to be marginal at best and so the extra two cores of the 5820K would be much more beneficial eventually. They may not be right now, but eventually they'll have a big use.

So really the way I see it is it's down to whether you want to overclock or not since when overclocked they hit similar clock speeds, the IPC difference is minor but the 50% core increase is major.

X99 will give more PCI-E lanes so is going to be better for 3 and 4 way SLI but for 2 cards I don't really believe there's much in it all.

Aye, as I pointed out to Simon several pages back stock clocks shoulda been top of his list of skylake advantages, being one area it actually comes out ahead. (Edit: apparently I was quoting thesuperlouis at the time not Simon, but still.)

For 2 cards skylake is fine provided you're not going for the faster SSD options - if you lose 2 or 4 lanes to e.g. an NVMe drive then suddenly you're facing a performance hit on AMD for two cards or being unable to run two nVidia cards in SLI at all.

 

[thesuperlouis]

cheers simon! its getting rather weird how offended they get by someone likeing the i7 6700k chip, btw "bakes" you aint gonna get higher frame rates with the 5820k as benchmarks have shown that the i7 6700k wins on that front, games only utilize 4 cores max, and as you may not yet already know.... core v core the i7 6700k is faster and superior, its newer technology and architecture also gives it a lot more advantages over the 5820k

 

[Hedge]

also gives it a lot more advantages over the 5820k

What advantages are these?

 

[thesuperlouis]

go google it hedge, newer technology does have its advantages!!

 

[Simon Belmont]

cheers simon! its getting rather weird how offended they get by someone likeing the i7 6700k chip, btw "bakes" you aint gonna get higher frame rates with the 5820k as benchmarks have shown that the i7 6700k wins on that front, games only utilize 4 cores max, and as you may not yet already know.... core v core the i7 6700k is faster and superior, its newer technology and architecture also gives it a lot more advantages over the 5820k

This^

 

[Dave2150]

Seems quite a hot topic this skylake and x99 lark. I couldn't tell you myself which is better but from my understanding from reading on this thread and a few others. From a gamers point of view if I was buying. I think I would go with the x99 as I like having a high performance system as I like my games to be at max settings and a high frame rate.
I also don't like upgrading my motherboard and cpu a lot, so go for the one that will give me the performance I want for the longest.
Also I have a quite a big monitor so need my sli goodness, and from whats been mentioned x99 does it better?

Except that Skylake offers superior frame rates in games compared to x99...

X99 is only faster when running quad SLI/Crossfire.

Of course this is at 'normal' overclocks, so 4.6/4.7Ghz for Skylake (air) and 4.2-4.4Ghz for 5820 (aio water).

Games don't care about having 6 cores, hence IPC and frequency > all, for gaming.

 

[Phemo]

core v core the i7 6700k is faster and superior, its newer technology and architecture also gives it a lot more advantages over the 5820k

It's true, clock for clock Skylake is better and there is no dispute about that. But what other advantages are there? Other than a marginal increase in IPC? Oh and DMI 3.0 between chipset and CPU.

In real world use you're not going to be able to tell the difference between a 5820K at 4.5GHz and a 6700K at 4.7GHz in games, you simply won't notice anything unless you're comparing benchmark scores and marginal FPS. So other than the marginal IPC increase I'm not sure what else you could possibly mean mean by "a lot more advantages".

 

[uksoldierboy]

Except that Skylake offers superior frame rates in games compared to x99...

X99 is only faster when running quad SLI/Crossfire.

Of course this is at 'normal' overclocks, so 4.6/4.7Ghz for Skylake (air) and 4.2-4.4Ghz for 5820 (aio water).

Games don't care about having 6 cores, hence IPC and frequency > all, for gaming.

Although that's not actually true is it.. there's quite a lot of games that will happily use more that 4 cores

But I suppose it's true from older games, the higher IPC on skylake would give you a little fps increase, but chances are your fps isn't going to be low anyway..

 

[nkuk]

It's true, clock for clock Skylake is better and there is no dispute about that. But what other advantages are there? Other than a marginal increase in IPC? Oh and DMI 3.0 between chipset and CPU.

In real world use you're not going to be able to tell the difference between a 5820K at 4.5GHz and a 6700K at 4.7GHz in games, you simply won't notice anything unless you're comparing benchmark scores and marginal FPS. So other than the marginal IPC increase I'm not sure what else you could possibly mean mean by "a lot more advantages".

The advantages of the 6700k are better single thread performance, and the majority of PC games/programs favour single thread performance over >8 threads, lower electricity usage and lower temperatures, both of those increase substantially if the 5820k is overclocked. The 5820k wins on price at the moment as the 6700k/6600k have a much higher demand than supply, hence the prices rising.

The limiting factor in games is always the GPU, few games are CPU bound so having 12 rather than 8 threads is hardly going to make much difference years from now IMHO. Plus the 6700k has the inbuilt GPU that DX12 can potentially pair with a discrete GPU that might increase framerate more than those extra CPU cores.

 

[Phemo]

Of course, I acknowledged that Skylake is better clock for clock. However when you've got both CPUs at roughly the same clock speeds the performance difference you're talking is around or even below 5% - that translates to approximately nothing you'll ever notice in the real world. Maybe marginal gaps on benchmarks, but nothing you'd actually be able to notice if the two were side by side. Power consumption is a totally valid point however. Temperatures I'm not so sure about though thanks to the 5820K having a soldered IHS rather than the 6700K's TIM IHS.

It remains to be seen how well more cores and threads will make moving forward. I personally think it's going to make a noticeable difference in a year or two from now but time will tell

My personal take on it is that Skylake is good and has a place, absolutely, it's just priced way out of that place right now. When you can pick a 6700K up for closer to the £250-£280 mark then it's all good.

 

[uksoldierboy]

The advantages of the 6700k are better single thread performance, and the majority of PC games/programs favour single thread performance over >8 threads, lower electricity usage and lower temperatures, both of those increase substantially if the 5820k is overclocked. The 5820k wins on price at the moment as the 6700k/6600k have a much higher demand than supply, hence the prices rising.

The limiting factor in games is always the GPU, few games are CPU bound so having 12 rather than 8 threads is hardly going to make much difference years from now IMHO. Plus the 6700k has the inbuilt GPU that DX12 can potentially pair with a discrete GPU that might increase framerate more than those extra CPU cores.

As they do when Skylake is overclocked too

this lower electricity usage point is a load or crap, surely if the difference in electricity usage was a true deciding/Worrying factor, you should be focusing your efforts on earning a better wage, not blowing a wad of cash getting a gaming system?

In my mind there's no argument here, Skylake has a higher IPC, but it won't make a game that's unplayable on a X99 build suddenly playable, to think otherwise is frankly stupid.

An I5 skylake build i can get behind, but to go for a 6700K at current prices, and ignore an X99 5820K build which offers 99.9% of the performance in single thread games and blows a 6700K away in everything else would be crazy.

 

[Orangey]

This debate is suffering from some perennial untruths, or "zombie lies" (lies that won't die) as I like to say.

Firstly that games don't benefit from >4 cores, they do: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...-already-benefit-from-six-cores-CPUs/Reviews/

Secondly people keep listing "higher IPC" at the top of the pros & cons lists for Skylake. It's so minimal that you should really just disregard it, outside of 1 anomaly I have not seen it make any diff in any games.

 

[Caracus2k]

you aint gonna get higher frame rates with the 5820k as benchmarks have shown that the i7 6700k wins on that front, games only utilize 4 cores max, and as you may not yet already know.... core v core the i7 6700k is faster and superior, its newer technology and architecture also gives it a lot more advantages over the 5820k

Except reviews don't show the 6700K winning every time do they...

http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/luke-hill/intel-core-i7-6700k-i5-6600k-skylake-cpu-review/8/

GTAV
=======

[email protected] 1920*1080 avg FPS 74.8
[email protected] 1920*1080 avg FPS 75.4

Shadow or Mordor
==============

[email protected] 1920*1080 avg FPS 121.2
[email protected] 1920*1080 avg FPS 122.1


Tomb Raider
===========

[email protected] 1920*1080 avg FPS 90.3
[email protected] 1920*1080 avg FPS 87.9

So what they actually show is a 5820k and 6700k trading blows with very little between them. If you up the resolution to 1440p or 4k these games would become even more GPU bound so that's not going to be helped by a four core 6700k either.

Why don't you try backing up your assertions without posting nonsense cnet articles that compared pre built PC's with totally different GPU and O/S configurations.

Also what are these mysterious advantages that you believe Skylake's architecture gives you over X99? Ill trade your improvement in IPC and higher stock and OC core speeds for more cores/threads, more PCI-E lanes and more L3 cache (2mb per core on 6700k vs 2.5mb on 5820k).

As expected the article I have linked to shows that in gaming there's rarely more than 1fps between a 6700k @ 4.7ghz and a 5820k @ 4.5ghz and the winner is not always the same chip. Where the 6700k excels most it trades blows with a 5820k where the 5820k excels it totally trashes the 6700K

ie

Cinebench (multicore)
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[email protected] - 1034
[email protected] - 1307

Handbrake Conversion
================

[email protected] - 44.9
[email protected] - 54.6

7 ZIP benchmark
=============

[email protected] - 30091
[email protected] - 40410

these are not trivial differences, in heavily multi threaded apps the 5820k always beats the 6700k and by some margin.

Given that a 6700k and a 5820k system currently cost about the same its a bit of a no brainer which to choose especially when you consider that X99 will almost certainly have more longevity than Z170

why will X99 have more longevity you ask?

1) more PCI-e lanes allows for more cards to be added giving access to upcoming I/O, multi GPU setups and multiple fast PCI-E SSD'd

2) Z170 will be getting one more CPU lineup - 'kabylake' still 14nm with most of the effort directed towards improving the iGPU which is of little interest to anyone

X99 will get a die shrink down to 14nm 'Broadwell-E' this will almost certainly (as a percentage) yield more CPU based improvement over Haswell-E then Skylake to Kabylake will as Kabylake is neither a die shrink nor a proper redesign of the CPU (ala the old tick/tock) its a minor refresh

Buy a 5820k now and you may have a meaningful upgrade a few years down the line to an eight core Broadwell-E processor or a six core version both on a smaller 14nm process. Buy a 6700K now and you wont likely have much of a meaningful upgrade to the '7700k' Kabylake CPU unless a better iGPU is your thing


3) Your stuck with 4 cores/ 8 threads with Z170, not so with X99. If games do become more multi threaded (likely given DX12 and the inability to scale processor speeds up much of late) then your Z170 based computer will lag a long way behind a hex core or Octo core X99 setup

4) X99 has more cache per CPU core and more potential memory bandwidth than Z170 has

 

[Caracus2k]

This debate is suffering from some perennial untruths, or "zombie lies" (lies that won't die) as I like to say.

Firstly that games don't benefit from >4 cores, they do: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...-already-benefit-from-six-cores-CPUs/Reviews/

Secondly people keep listing "higher IPC" at the top of the pros & cons lists for Skylake. It's so minimal that you should really just disregard it, outside of 1 anomaly I have not seen it make any diff in any games.

although I largely agree with your points the article you link is from 2010....5 years old! hardly up to date and relevant now ....more games are now taking advantage of 4+ cores albeit very slowly ...

The ipc improvement of skylake is largely irrelevant to gaming as you point out however

 

[David Bisset]

Except that Skylake offers superior frame rates in games compared to x99...

X99 is only faster when running quad SLI/Crossfire.

Of course this is at 'normal' overclocks, so 4.6/4.7Ghz for Skylake (air) and 4.2-4.4Ghz for 5820 (aio water).

Games don't care about having 6 cores, hence IPC and frequency > all, for gaming.

Except that's not what tests have shown, they are about the same, each winning in some cases. The IPC gain is marginal (most use-cases show it within a percent) and thr 5820k's soldered IHS helps it on frequency resulting in it not on average topping out slower than skylake either. Yes, single ships vary, so you never know, and there are added cooling requirements as the total amount of heat generated is a bit higher.

Also, out of curiosity, if X99 is 'only better for quad SLI' ... what lane arrangement would tri-SLI use on skylake?

 

[setter]

You can only do tri sli on skylake with an uber expensive PLX board. Which in itself introduces latency compared to native pcie lanes.

 

[lamboman]

I can't possibly be the only one who is finding this thread a little ridiculous now.

An extra two cores is not needed and won't help the longevity of the system, yet an extra <10% IPC improvement will?

Don't be silly.

I love how the long posts with real hard data and useful recommendations never see any responses either

 

[Orangey]

I can't possibly be the only one who is finding this thread a little ridiculous now.

An extra two cores is not needed and won't help the longevity of the system, yet an extra <10% IPC improvement will?

Don't be silly.

I love how the long posts with real hard data and useful recommendations never see any responses either

Like I said, you're really just preaching to the choir at this point, one side has facts and the other has marketing guff.

Normally you would simply be able to say it's cheaper, but it seems Intel had other ideas.